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One of the first writers of the Romantic period William Blakes writings are a curious mixture, his voice in the early 1790 s was the conscience of the Romantic Age. He was an artist with words and believed himself to be guided by visions from the spiritual world, which lie heavy in this poem I have chosen. In this essay I would like to focus on the poem Little Black Boy to which Blake centers on the spiritual awaking to a divine love that transcends race. It tells of how the Little Black Boy came to know his identity and to know God.
To begin with Blakes poem is dramatic that is, in the voice of a speaker other than the poet himself. This poem of Blakes uses the Little Black Boy to narrate the poem in first person. This projects the reader clearly inside the consciousness of the boy in the poem giving us the images from the defined observer. As a result Blake stands outside innocence and experience in a distance position. The innocence is from Songs of Innocence, Blakes first collection of poems, to which Blakes subject matter shows the innocent, pastoral world of childhood. This was juxtaposed with experience, which was taken from Songs of Experience, his other collection, which shows the adult world of corruption and repression.
Therefore showing the two contrary states of the human soul. The songs of innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children, namely the Little Black Boy who tells this didactic story about himself in this poem. The form of the poem is in heroic quatrains, which are stanza of pentameter lines rhyming ABAB. This standard rhyme and alliteration is exemplified by repetition in the line-final (in couplets) by individual sounds parallel, this occurs in this poem with the repetition of sounds; for example wild and child in line 1 and 3 made by the final consonant cluster, also in tree and me in line 5 and 7 which for the final end word sound pattern the vowel sound is repeated.
Blakes form is a variation on the ballad stanza, and the slightly longer lines for this poem are well suited to the pedagogical tone of this poem. Blake uses powerful imagery with metaphors and similes, White as an angel is the English child, But I as if bereaved of light to refer to their skin evokes the negative thoughts of this African boy and how he feels about being of a different color. Moreover his skin Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove brings forth the burden of this 18 th century lad. Furthermore Blake builds the poem on clear imagery of light and dark. Line 1 reads And I am black, but O! my soul is white.
The contrast of this in the first stanza between the childs black skin and his belief in the whiteness of the soul lends poignancy to his particular problem of self-understanding. The body and soul, black and white, and earth and heaven are all aligned in a rhetorical gesture that basically confirms the stance of Christian doctrine: the theology of the poem is one that counsels forbearance in the present and promises a recompense for suffering in the hereafter. In a culture in which black and white connote bad and good, respectively, the childs developing sense of self requires him to perform some fairly symbolic gymnastics with these images of color. Blakes eye perceived what the poet understood as the spiritual replies that underlie the world of common experience.
As guiding figure The Little Black Boys mother symbolizes a natural and selfless love that becomes the poems ideal, a spiritual symbol to a hard life but one with God. She shows a tender concern for her childs self-esteem, as well as a strong desire that he know the comfort of God. She persuades him, according to the conventional Christian doctrine, that earthly life is but a preparation for the rewards in heaven. The theme of this poem evokes the authors concern for the spiritual progress of mankind. In conclusion Blakes intention, which in the eighteenth century, literary works were considered to be products of conscious intention, is to show the boy transcend the replies of oppression and racism, and internalize his mothers lesson and apply it in his relations with the outer world. His suffering can be a source of pride rather than shame.
The theology of the poem is one that counsels forbearance in the present and promises a recompense for suffering thereafter.
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Research essay sample on Songs Of Innocence Black And White
